Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

Those who were left with the fallout from Bertie Ahern’s ten years in office, namely Cowen and Lenihan, were probably impressed by the production value of the Bertie documentary series last night - if nothing else. The programme was exceptionally well put together and surpassed what I had expected it to be. It wasn’t reliant [...]

Is it really a big story? Really? Personal insults do not mark out a quality debater but nonetheless the big picture last night was that many thousands turned out in the hail, sleet and snow to protest at education cuts.
Those cuts have yielded horror stories around the country. Like the school in Cloneen, Tipp which [...]

Where is the radical reform in the civil service ? Sunday Times figures show that almost every civil servant in the country has received a pay increase. The Government seemed happy to let the civil servants write the budget and now we find that the oversight process for employees in the civil service, the Performance [...]

REd Mum has the post on Michael Kennedy TD at the pensioner protest on Wednesday.
He spoke of the money given to single parents and their ‘10 kids’ and, get this, ‘FREE HOUSES’. (They are actual quotes.) Seriously my daughter is 16 years old now and he is saying there are free houses, given what I [...]

Yesterday, in the aftermath of the climbdown regarding the Medical Cards fiasco, I read a post on the weblog of Green Party Justice Spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe, which dealt with the Medical Cards issue.
After reading the post, I gave him my view of the Fianna Fáíl / Green coalition, and put some questions to him and [...]

We hear that Fianna Fail county councillors are so outraged about the medical cards that they have arranged a regional meeting of an entire Euro constituency of councillors at 24 hours notice for tomorrow. No doubt they are spitting at the prospect of taking the largest of kickings in June for the measure.They aren’t the [...]

I’m talking out of turn here politically, but if anyone is interested in a practical solution to the over 70s medical card fiasco, there’s my tuppence worth.
I might be asking a rather obvious question here but if the GPs charge the state €640 (the figure itself isn’t really relevant at the moment) for giving people [...]

Brian Cowen is talking to the EU Legal Service about drafting opt-outs and protocols to make the Lisbon Treaty “palatable to the Irish public” according to Jamie Smyth and others this morning.
Cowen, who said the France, which is the current president of the EU, had also asked the Council of Ministers’ legal services “to see [...]

Detail is a little light at the moment, bankers pay and bonuses look like being tied to good behaviour though. Will we see departures like those in the UK?

Over at the Property Pin they have been digging away at the proposals in yesterday’s budget for affordable housing provision. The website set up (homechoiceloan.ie) appears to suggest the government is steppign into subprime mortgages for those refused by banks and building societies as well as stipulating the houses purchased come from the 35,000-50,000 new, [...]

On the back of the solidarity being shown by Ministers in taking a 10% pay cut for next year, a source got me wondering whether those Ministers with additional income streams - like teachers’ pensions - might not be convinced to forgo these also. What with them spending enough time in the Dail to qualify [...]

Suzy brings up an interesting point on the White Paper/Estimates and the budget cut for government agencies. Mergers and abolitions are taking place in 41 agencies and budget cuts/logistic sharing is the order of the day as well.
However some have fared better than others.
The Equality Authority’s budget has been cut by 43% and the Irish [...]

AT this rate it is the last dose of humour we will see today. Keep an eye out here for details of liveblogging around the ’sphere.
Update: Live blogging of the budget will be taking place over at Suzy’s scribblelive plot.

Anyone know why the ESRI shifted their embargo on the Quarterly Summary to 09.30 tomorrow? Conspiracy theorists would have a field day with the possibilities but it seems odd to deny the Irish Times their splash headline tomorrow.
News is bad by the way, contraction wll break 1% of GNP this year.